Art + Australia. Issue 8 (57.1): Multinaturalism

ISSN 0004-301 X
159 pages | Softcover | B&W and colour images 
March 2021

Editor: Tessa Laird
Authors: Peter Waples-Crowe, Tessa Laird, Mykaela Saunders, Alexis Wright, Cecilia Vicuña, Danni Zuvela, Alexis Milonopoulos, Nick Modrzewski, Caitlin Franzmann, Camila Marambio, Sophie Chao, Michael Taussig, Niningka Lewis, Linda Stupart, Sebastian Wiedemann, Richard Orjis, Kuai Shen, Debris Facility, Nicholas Mangan, Tony Birch, Chris Berthelsen, Xin Cheng

This issue is born out of forest fires and deforestation. It is born out of extraction and despoliation, which ravage landscapes and people, including unique and irreplaceable lifeways, languages and cultures. This issue is born out of anger and despair for irretrievable losses, including plant and animal relations we will never see again. This issue is dedicated to the three billion animals that lost their lives on this continent in the summer of 2019–20, losses subsequently eclipsed by a virus spiralling out of control in the anthroposphere. But this issue is also born out of fierce love and an undying spirit of joy, as we celebrate the indescribable beauty that still lives on this planet, and fight for its ‘ongoingness’, its ‘survivance’. This spirit was attested to in the overwhelming number of proposals we received for Multinaturalism; had we said yes to them all we would have needed to print five different versions of the issue. Since the theme encompasses diversity on every level, including the inter-dimensional, I imagine these other versions existing in parallel to this one.